Tahoe taps into harvest mentality with fall food events
By Johnathan L. Wright, Reno Gazette-Journal
It all started 25 years ago in a campground in Tahoe City. A small group of food and wine enthusiasts had gathered in a tent to sample the objects of their affection. They shivered as it began to snow.
Cut to 2010. The tent is long gone. The Lake Tahoe Autumn Food and Wine Festival, which ran from Sept. 10 through 12, now sprawls across the Village at Northstar and, this year for the first time, up Northstar Mountain to the new Ritz-Carlton, Lake Tahoe.
Add in the inaugural Lake Tahoe Restaurant Week, with places offering $20, $30 and $40 prix fixe menus through Sept. 12, and the result was a mix that drew locals while giving visitors a reason to come to Tahoe beyond Labor Day, the traditional end of the summer season.
“Fall is our third season in Tahoe, and we think this helps anchor the season,” said Judy Laverty, the festival’s director, who was one of the original shivering few in the tent a quarter century ago.
